The Last Warner Woman (24 page)

When you is in a madhouse you see all manner of things, and your eyes hurt you from the visions that is not visions at all. It is all truth. Sometimes if the warden decide you is behaving too badly, he take off all your clothes and throw you into a room. The walls of this room is soft but there is really nothing soft bout it. We did call it the Pads. When warden lock the door not a stitch of light get in, and terrible things would happen inside. I tell you, if you never did mad before, you come out mad mad mad, white froth terrorizing your mouth corners. And some people who was mad already, their mind torment them even worse than before, drive them even madder when they was inside that room. Some people come out and act like nothing at all was wrong, but when mealtime come is then they take the dinner knife and put it inside their necks—simple so—kill them own self, the blood spraying onto other people’s food. When you inside that room and you hear the door open, sometimes you don’t know if warden was coming to let you out or if Satan was letting himself in. Satan, let me tell you, was just a regular man. He did have a regular name and he did have a regular job. He did grow flowers. But he was Satan all the same because he do things to you that you spend your whole life trying to forget. When you in that room sometimes all you could do was put your hands by your ass and shit into it and maybe then you have something to protect yourself with. Perhaps you don’t want to hear none of this but I talking it all the same. I talking what I don’t ever talk before. Everything you ever wanted was always on the outside of that room—your clothes, your bed, your dignity. And I find out then that a man with a key is a man with a terrible power.

But what I want to say now is that I remember everything. I remember when it was that I did go looking for you, Mr. Writer Man. That morning I did wake up vex and empty all at once. I say I not eating no breakfast. The nurses try force me but I was having none of it. I take the oats and fling it clean cross the room. I take an egg and mash it in a nurse uniform. They say to me,
Pearline, we’ll have to take you to Matron!
They think that would make me fraid. But I say to them,
Take me! Take me now, cause I have some questions I need to put to that miss. You think I fraid of Matron this morning? Take me now!
I bawl and scream and carry on bad, and so they drag me into Matron office. Matron did look at me and frown.
What is the problem today, Mrs. Portious-Dehaney?
It was one of them days that I feel to correct her, to tell her what my name really was, but I know that it was not the day to fight that fight. So I say to her, plain and simple,
Where him is please?
She say,
Excuse me, Mrs. Portious-Dehaney? Talk straight.
I bawl out,
Don’t tell me to talk straight, and don’t talk to me like I is no idiot. I want to know what you do with my son! I want to know where him is!
The two nurse who draw me in start to laugh and even Matron look like she want to chuckle. Then one of the nurses say,
Looks like she’s having an episode today, ma’am, maybe we need to sedate her?
I turn round before they could do anything and I fire one box cross the fool-fool nurse face. Pandemonium was ready to break out but I turn back to Matron and say,
My son, Ma’am. My son who born March 18, 1976. My son who born right here in this hellhole.
Matron face turn white and she start to stammer and the fool-fool nurse who was rubbing off her face from the slap that I give her was still going on bout
sedate the mad bitch, let me inject her, Matron.
But Matron not paying them no mind anymore. She sit down hard in her chair and she look at me like she ongly just see me for the first time.
Leave us for a moment,
she say to the nurses. They look at her like this time is she mad. Matron raise her voice,
I said get out!
and the two of them stumble out of the office like fraid puss. Matron look at me now and say,
Pearline, tell me, how have you remembered this all of a sudden?
I feel my knees get weak and I sit down.
All on a sudden, ma’am? All on a sudden?
I was crying now, for all the vexation gone and leave me with just emptiness.
How I could ever forget a child I give birth to, Matron? What kind of mother would I be to forget something like that?
Matron shake her head.
But that was almost five years ago, Pearline.
I never care what she say though. I tell her,
Ma’am. I can’t forget him, and I want to see him now.
She say,
I don’t think that is possible …
So I stand up and hit the desk hard and I tell her as firm as I can manage without my voice breaking,
I want to see my son!
Matron say,
Shhhhh. Shhhhh. Pearline, calm down, my dear. Calm down. I will … I will see what I can do. I promise you.

I don’t know how long it did take. Maybe it was the next day. Maybe it was the next year. I was sleeping in my bed and then Matron herself was pushing me awake.
Pearline, get up now. You’re coming with me.
I had to rub the sleep out my eye to see that is not dream I was dreaming, but there was Matron and she not dressed in her whites as usual. She was in normal-people clothes and holding up another set of clothes that must be for me.
Come, Pearline. We don’t have much time. We have to get the train.
When I finish wash my face and put on everything, she take my hand soft soft in her own and nod.
I’m so proud of you,
she say to me.
Remembering your son is a big sign of healing. You may be all right after all.
I was surprised.
You taking me to him?
I ask.
Yes, my dear. You’ll get a chance to see him. We can’t stay for long, though, but we’ll see how this first visit goes.
Matron keep on talking, and I keep on nodding, but I did stop hearing anything she was saying. I don’t believe I am going to finally see my boy. I know that it was years ago that him born, but I can’t tell if it was five or fifteen. I know he was born on a day that I did open my eyes and see the spirit of death floating bout in that room. I had to speak unto that spirit in my own spirit language. I tell it seven and seven and seven. I tell it to leave in the name of the most holy Savior, and it did leave.

That morning, it come to me that life is a terrible circle. I never know my mother and now my son don’t know his. I want to make a good impression and so I get worried bout how I was looking. I bout to stop Matron and tell her no, I cannot meet my boy in these hospital clothes. But when I look down I see that I was wearing clothes I never did see before. The new clothes almost frighten me but then I remember it was Matron who did bring them. So I start rehearsing in my mind what I was going to say when I see this boy who is my son, this beautiful boy. I decide already that he is beautiful. I decide that I will be able to pick him out of a room of a thousand people, because he will be the most beautifulest of them all. I was quiet, quiet while I was walking with Matron, sitting with her on the train, walking up this road and that. I was keeping my own counsel. I ongly look up when I begin to hear schoolchildren playing. My heart like it was set to gallop right out of my chest. Matron still walking ahead, fifty yards, a hundred yards before she realize that I stop. I stop because now I see him.

My dear. I saw you. I know it was you because you was the most beautifulest boy. You was standing there in the playground and if there was a million more children I still would have known you different from the rest. I did feel so stunned I could not move my foot. It was stiff like concrete, like I was just a statue out there on the pavement, considering the words of Jesus. I watch you, how you was all by yourself. I think you was no more than six. Your skin was as pale as milk. All the other pickney them was sliding down slides, romping in the sand and kicking up dust, them was swinging on the swings and bouncing up and down on the seesaws. But there was you, just standing in the middle of it all. And maybe you decide to play make-believe. Maybe you decide to pretend to be a plane or something. You did throw your arms wide, and you started to go
Zooooooom. Zooooooom. Zooooooooom.
You was spinning and spinning and zooming and spinning, so fast like you was in your own world. Then your two fists open, and your fingers was like stars, and you was holding the lower part of your belly like a woman will hold herself when she catch up in the middle of birth pain, and all the time you was still spinning. And I know what was happening to you, my child. It was the spirit. The spirit did hold you. Matron was holding me too, holding me tight around my waist and saying,
Calm down now, Pearline, Calm down! Have some control, woman!
A teacher woman walk up to you the same time looking stern and trying to tell you something as well. I think maybe she was telling you to calm down too. But the two of us wasn’t paying them an earthly mind. We was Warners together. The two of us spinning that morning. The two of us shouting like Jeremiah. For the word
zoooom
did fall clean from your mouth and instead you was shouting the same as me,
Flood and Earthquake! Wind and Storm! Warrant!

A
T THE END, I WALK OUT TO FIND ADAMINE ONCE AGAIN
on the balcony. The night is cold and the trees, without their leaves, are shivering. The city is spread out, twinkling like some enormous galaxy before us. I know she comes out here every night, steps softly, as if trying not to wake me. From my room I have heard her mumbling on and on, until eventually I fall asleep. There was one night, however, that I parted the curtains to see her, but then I promised myself never to do it again. I was too afraid of what I saw. It seems that my mother had adopted the habit of climbing over the railing and standing there balanced on the thin ledge, her face turned toward the city. I had to admit, her body seemed so relaxed, so unencumbered, as if she were no longer penned in by any man, or any country, or even by my story.

She spread her arms wide and said softly to the city below, “shhhhhh” as if to hush it so it would listen to her.

But if I had witnessed her do this too often, I would have worried. I would have worried that one night she might simply step out into the night. That she would fall and fade. I could imagine her leaning forward. Slowly. Slowly. And then the air would grab her. The wind would lash her body. The ground would become something like the long arms of God and those arms would be stretched toward her.

This God would say a benediction.

“Your life was not an easy one, and now your bones are weary, and you are coming to take your rest. But know this, Adamine, we have loved you.”

She would open her eyes at last to see what was coming toward her, the end of the future, the ground, her savior’s arms. But before the Warner Woman’s teeth could break against the pavement, she would say unto it, “Behold.”

And if I saw her out there on the ledge, I would worry because I know that she had tried to kill herself before. It was twenty-five years ago. She had been taken out of St. Osmund’s Hospital for a kind of excursion. Apparently she was being taken to meet a son she had finally remembered. It was to be the first time I would catch a glimpse of my mother.

But something happened.

Of this meeting the records simply say, “there was a rather unfortunate and dare I say, somewhat unexplainable incident.” The report is initialed SL. Sylvia Lightbourne.

Adamine was taken back to the hospital where there seems to have been screaming and scraping and biting and scratching. There may also have been the smashing of things. She had to be tranquilized and sent to bed.

But in the night Adamine woke up. The sedatives had worn off, and without making any fuss, she wrote herself a suicide note—a simple, elegant declaration of who she was. Or perhaps it was a suggestion of what was to be put on her gravestone.
My name is Adamine Bustamante and I did born amongst the lepers.

She took off her nightgown and the moon shone on her breasts. She ripped the nightgown in two, and tied one end around her neck. She climbed on the bed then, and had it not been for another patient who woke up just at this moment, who looked at Adamine and began to cry and to babble and to beat her chest, such a commotion that sent the night nurse running in, Adamine might have been found the next morning hanging by her nightgown. The room would have smelt of her feces because the hanged always do this, as if in death the body tries to empty itself.

I cannot help but think these thoughts when I come to find Adamine on the balcony, on the other side of the railing, her back to me, her face toward the city. It seems, however, that she knows I am here, because she begins to speak clearly, and she is addressing me.

“My dear. I saw you. I know it was you because you was the most beautifulest boy. You was standing there in the playground and if there was a million more children I still would have known you different from the rest …”

After she has told me all that she remembers, she asks, “Why you never tell me from the beginning? Why you never tell me who you was, and furthermore why you never tell me what you was?”

“Because I wanted you to remember by yourself,” I tell her.

“But you could have did tell me,” she insists. Her voice is trembling. “I did always feel so alone in this world.”

I walk up to her then and reach my arms around and I hold my mother softly. I whisper into her back.

“The Warner People is still here, Mama. We is still here. Seers. Prophets. Forecasters of Earthquakes. We is here. But things is different now. We take the pencils down from behind our ears and now we is writing. We been writing one whole heap of books. And guess what, Mama? There is people who go into bookshops and they buy the things we write, and they put them on their shelves. And plenty times they don’t know that all of these things they been reading was not no novel, was not no poem, was not no history book. It was a simple warning. Mama, plenty people in this world have ears but they don’t know how to hear. And plenty of them have eyes, but they don’t know how to see.”